The decision to forcibly close a communication platform resembles the one to annihilate Covid by bringing tanks to the streets. They are evidence of the authoritarian face of a regime
By Andi Bushati
Whoever dares to return to the not-so-beautiful memories of the Covid era surely remembers an act that is as crazy as it is ridiculous. In the feverish battle to fight the virus, our prime minister decided to bring armored cars to the boulevards of the capital. Along with the measures and schedules he announced from the isolation tower in Surrel, about when pensioners should leave the house, when mothers with children and when teenagers should leave, Edi Rama imposed the illusion that he could defeat the virus with the muzzles of tanks. This very absurdity of the isolation era is very similar to the last order from heaven to close TikTok in Albania for a year. What the fight against both the health virus and the social virus have in common is the dictatorial mindset of dealing with them.
This should also be the angle from which to view this absurd measure. Although in our public arena topics are being debated about the effect of the Chinese platform on the mental health of young people; although many oppositionists raise their fingers to denounce that the promoter of the culture of violence with elected officials in parliament and municipalities cannot have the medicine to cure it; although some others see this act as an electoral maneuver; the essence of what is happening is the revelation of the autocratic face of Edi Rama.
To understand this, it is enough to summarize a few simple truths. Albania will become the only country in the democratic world where it claims to belong, which has completely closed an important social platform. The moral arguments that Edi Rama is putting forward to do this are similar to those that the Taliban used to eradicate Tik Tok after their return to power in Afghanistan. The fact that such a thing is happening by abusively linking it to the tragic death of Martin Cami, while it has been proven that neither the victim nor the killer had any connection to this social network, raises questions about an arbitrary action. The parody that was used for public consultation with parents, to justify a decision made in advance, is a farce that only happens in anti-democratic regimes.
The extreme and not at all proportional measure of closure, without first going through intermediate steps such as the installation of filters or age restrictions, is typical of the way these regimes operate.
Having listed all this, it must be admitted that the debate on whether or not to close Tik Tok is not simply a quarrel of our small province. He has divided into pros and cons even much more democratic societies than ours. Thus, in the USA, during the first Trump presidency, the latter demanded such a thing. But wait, don’t get carried away and say: “look, it’s an American idea”. The arguments had nothing in common with moral denunciations of the “neighborhood alley”. The debate was about the violation of national security, the possibility of spying on American citizens by a platform based in China, and also about the theft and use of their personal data.
But, although in the USA the clash was not about moral scruples, but about state reasons, in that democratic country the cause of those who fought for rights and freedoms, before security, won.
Their arguments mentioned that Tik Tok was a network of penalization that could limit free speech, could kill the right to express itself of millions of people who communicated with each other and created content. They raised the alarm that such an act could create a dangerous precedent of repeating this extreme sanction for other platforms. This is the reason why no member of the Euro-Atlantic orbit has taken this step.
While we are doing it, through the magic wand of a single man, who decides both to kill the virus with tanks and to enter or exit the open Balkans and to donate the sovereignty of the state by setting up Italian migrant camps.
Therefore, first of all, more than a debate that has to do with the mental health of children, with the fight against the culture of violence, with the electoral maneuvers of the moment, in the act of closing Tik Tok we must discover the tools and weapons that are used in this battle. The way of decision-making, the manipulations that preceded it and the farce through which they were served to the public, speak volumes. They highlight the necessary features to sketch the face of a regime. They prove that this decision is an illustration of the autocratic essence of Edi Rama’s power. Where this is leading us, there is no need for much elaboration. In the late 1960s, Albania became the only country in the world to ban religion by law. The record is being repeated today by opposing an almost spiritual belief of this new century, the numerical religion.
